“That’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.”  These words spoken by Neal Armstrong while walking the surface of the moon during the Apollo 11 mission struck excitement into the minds of those in the United States. Originally, people thought putting a man on the moon would be impossible, but once achieved, the doubters, along with the rest of the Unites States, began to believe anything was possible. It gave people a reason to dream, a reason to believe, but now some question if space exploration, the thing that inspired people to dream and believe, is worth funding. Space exploration is vital to the United States and the World. With the continuation of funds to U.S. space exploration, the United States will see profound increases in living conditions and technological advances. 

NASA has been underfunded for a majority of its existence. Throughout the history of NASA, the percentage of the US budget that it receives has never surpassed 5%, and since 1993 it hasn’t surpassed 1%. According to Daniel Cooper of Engadget.com, “congress has finally passed a bill authorizing NASA’s new budget that gives the agency annual funding of $19.5 billion.” This means that for the year of 2017, NASA has 19.5 billion dollars they can spend. To put that into perspective, in 1969, the year of the moon landing, NASA had a budget of only 4.251 billion dollars to spend. Although the dollar amount being spent is much higher today, the percentage of the US budget going towards NASA today is only .5%, compared to the 2.31% that went towards NASA in 1969. Even though NASA is underfunded, they still have made a major impact on how we live today.  

Space exploration has provided us with a new way of finding the steps we must take in order to create better living conditions and provide ways to fix Earth’s problems. The International Space Station is a giant research lab that orbits the Earth. According to Ron Garan in his article, Why Spend Money on Space Exploration When We Have So Many Problems Here on Earth, “The ISS provides a unique environment for scientific discovery that simply cannot be duplicated anywhere on Earth.” The research taking place on the International Space Station has led to a multitude of improvements for life on Earth. For example, Garan states that, “space based science offers an environment to foster new materials, better medicines, improved methods to provide clean water, and better ways to grow enough food for our increasing global population.” So by funding space exploration we are coming up with new ways to deal with the problems we have here on Earth, thus increasing the living conditions of millions around the world. By creating better ways of growing food we can help knock out world hunger and helping providing ways to create clean water, drinkable water will be more available to third world countries. NASA also created battery-free solar technology that will make it easier to provide electricity to parts of the world that are without it. According to Garan, “This system eliminates reliance on an electric grid, requires no batteries, stores thermal energy for efficient use when sunlight is absent, and works anywhere in the world.” Overall, space exploration provides many benefits and pushes humans to innovate and create. 

A large portion of technological advances made in the United States have come from discoveries made while exploring space, or from projects designed initially to help further space exploration. According to Marielle Moon of engadget.com, the development of the Hubble Space Telescope alone, “gave rise to several spinoff” technologies developed. The Hubble Space Telescope was part of a notable spin off leading to the development of more efficient breast cancer-detecting equipment. According to well-known scientist, Neil Degrasse Tyson, when the Hubble Space Telescope was first launched, one of its mirrors had the wrong curvature, which meant the data received was fuzzy and hard to see. While missions were in place to fix the curvature, Tyson proclaims, “An algorithm was developed to extract as much information as you possibly [could] from [those] fuzzy images of stars.” Tyson goes on to say that the algorithm was later shared with a medical doctor who noticed that the technique used to spot the stars in the fuzzy images was the same technique he used to spot cancer from MRI images. According to Tyson, the algorithm was put in place for, “early detection of breast cancer in mammograms.” Another advancement that was made possible by space exploration is the anti-icing technology used on planes to make air travel more safe in wintery conditions. NASA created Thermacool, which according to NASA is, “an innovative electric air conditioning system (that) uses a new compressor whose rotary pump design runs off an energy-efficient, brushless DC motor and allows pilots to use the air conditioner before the engine even starts.” This means the pilot can turn on the new air conditioner which will keep the plane warm and keep ice from forming on the plane before the plane is even preparing for takeoff, and also prior to the pilot powering up the main engines. By doing this, airlines save money that otherwise would be spent on jet fuel in order to keep the plane warm. Also, it speeds up the take-off preparation, making air travel more efficient and more smoothly run. Yet another example of a NASA spinoff technology are stronger radial tires, which make it possible for us to safely drive day in and day out. In 1976 NASA created a fibrous material that was five times stronger than steel and also much lighter. This fibrous material was utilized to provide strength to the parachute shrouds used to land the Mars rover on the surface of Mars safely. Goodyear Tire began to make tires with this new technology when they noticed the increased strength and durability of the material, giving birth to the reliable radial tires that are still used around the world today. Although space exploration has brought us many technological advances, some still believe NASA does not deserve the funding they receive.

Some argue that NASA is overfunded due to the fact that they do not spend the funds they receive efficiently and that NASA fails to complete their projects in a timely manner. An example of NASA not using funds properly while not meeting deadlines is the SOFIA project. According to the article, NASA under the spotlight, posted by nature.com, The SOFIA project included, “a German-built 2.5-metre telescope fitted into a NASA-modified Boeing 747 jet.” The idea was to get the telescope above a large portion of radio waves flowing throughout earth’s atmosphere. These radio waves cause disruptions to the infrared telescopes on the ground. The project in total took, “Fourteen years and more than US$1 billion after development began,” according to the same article. Nature.com reports the problem is that SOFIA was projected to initially cost only $265 million and was supposed to be completed in 2001, but experienced, “repeated delays,” resulting in a completion in 2010. It is possible for the problem of overfunding or underfunding to be resolved just by changing who’s in charge of the funding.

NASA is largely underfunded and falling behind due to the fact that there is a large amount of disagreement within congress on how to carry out NASA missions. In Joseph Stromberg’s article, For NASA, sending a person to Mars is simple. Dealing with Congress is hard., he explains how conflicting viewpoints are delaying missions and causing a scramble within NASA. According to Stromberg while referring to a potential Mars mission, “the biggest obstacle here isn’t technological. The biggest obstacle is the insane politics of space exploration.” There are multiple steps when it comes to manning a mission to mars, but, “The problem is that lawmakers have approved some of these steps – but may kill funding for others,” according to Stromberg. The killing of some parts of the mission causes major lack of funds and a waste of resources. By killing parts of the mission, Stromberg states that the US will, “have the most sophisticated human space exploration system of all time, but no money or plan to send it anywhere.” Most politicians will agree on going to mars, but they cannot agree on how to get there. The problem is that with the budget NASA has now and the amount of time being wasted, the National Research Council reports that, “carrying out an actual mission simply won’t be possible unless funding increases dramatically.” NASA could partially be at fault for the lack of funding it receives.

Opponents of the funding of space exploration argue that part of the reason the government has limited knowledge of the average cost of a space mission is because NASA doesn’t accurately keep records of space mission costs or efficiently spend the money received through funding. A problem with tracking the average costs of missions is that the missions are so, “wildly inconsistent,” according to the article, NASA under the spotlight, on nature.com. An idea proposed by the same article calls for NASA to make it so, “The baseline estimate in every case should be a mission’s total lifetime cost.” Another way for NASA to more accurately predict the funding required for certain mission would be to start using an independent cost estimate instead of, “relying on estimates by advocates who have incentive to be overly optimistic.” According to Joseph Stromberg, NASA is, “more concerned with holding on to streams of funding than spending it efficiently on useful projects.” Stromberg goes on to use an example of when NASA finished building a $349 million rocket-testing tower that was part of a program that had been cancelled four years earlier. Ideas are being thought up in order to change the way NASA is spending the funds they receive.

There are ways for NASA to change the way they spend money. Jacques Blamont in his article, US space exploration strategy: Is there a better way?, proposes that the US, “cannot rely on new resources, in the present economic circumstances, but must develop a new vision which would generate resources, or redirect spending towards the realization of missions following new practices.” NASA, in order to save money, must start coming up with new ideas for missions, instead of spending money and resources on missions that are part of older ideas. A large portion of the funding NASA receives goes towards the International Space Station, and Blamont proposes that money can be saved if NASA begins to give more, “purpose to the ISS by concentrating on the training of international crews for long-duration interplanetary flight and maneuvers.” By giving more purpose to the ISS, NASA would no longer need to continue building testing facilities, which would save the money NASA would be using in order to build those facilities. A major problem causing a call for NASA to lose funding is that NASA has lost its popularity to the American people.

Space exploration has lost popularity due to the fact that it isn’t seen as competition anymore. Jacques Blamont feels the moon missions were, “an inspiring goal, but it was funded and supported because it dealt with the threat of the Cold War.” International competition is a necessity for NASA to start better spending their money according to Blamont. Blamont feels that, “With little competition from other space programs, the [United States] has little incentive to make a dramatic change.” The peak of space exploration activity was during the 1960’s. This is because the Cold War was going on and the United States was in fierce competition with the Soviet Union. The competition grew tense when on October 4th, 1957, the Soviet Union launched their satellite, Sputnik 1, into low earth orbit. This caused great panic in the United states because it was the first time a satellite had been launched into orbit around earth, and it was by the enemy. The launch of Sputnik, “led directly to the creation of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA),” according to Steve Garber in his article Sputnik and The Dawn of the Space Age.  Due to the fierce competition during the cold war, in-between the years of 1961 and 1964, NASA’s budget was increased close to 500 percent. The increased budget lead to the peak of space exploration popularity, the Moon landing on July 20th, 1969. Today it’s clear space exploration isn’t as popular as it used to be. It shows in the amount of funding that goes towards space exploration. 

One of the biggest reasons people call for the funding of space exploration to be cut is that they feel we have enough problems here on Earth that need to be tended to, like the rapid pollution of earth, world hunger, and world poverty. Those people argue that the money being spent on space exploration should be going towards the fight against world hunger. According to a United Nations estimate, it would cost about 30 billion dollars a year to end world hunger. So if the US were to scrap space exploration entirely and put the funding for space exploration to fighting world hunger, other countries would only have to contribute 10.5 billion dollars collectively. According to a study done by researchers from the Universities of New South Wales and Purdue, “global temperatures could rise from 10 to 12 percent by the year 2300, making much of the world uninhabitable.” The people that want the funding of space exploration to be cut believe the funding of space exploration should be relocated to fighting pollution. According to Michael black and Annette Capel, writers of the book, Objective IELTS: self-Study student’s book: advanced, “It’s about time science turned its eyes back to this planet and set about doing something about poverty, disease and pollution.” Many share the same opinion as Black and Capel and call for the focus to be here on earth. Some go onto argue that the money being spent exploring space should be going towards exploring our oceans. According to the National Ocean service, “To date, we have explored less than five percent of the ocean.” Although these are valid reasons to disagree with space exploration, space exploration offers a new view on how to fix Earths problems.

By continuing to fund US space exploration the United States will experience a great increase in the average conditions of living and furthermore will be rewarded with great advancements in technology. Space exploration has brought the American people many technological advances that may have been unachievable if it wasn’t for space exploration. Space exploration provides us with new ways of dealing with the world’s problems. Problems like clean drinking water and hunger around the world. Space exploration has given people a reason to dream and reason to believe that anything is possible. Space exploration has also brought peace between nations which is shown by the International Space Station. A place where 15 different countries work peacefully together. Since NASA only receives half a penny of tax dollars from each taxpaying person, reducing the funding NASA receives would be ridiculous and a dishonor to all American people. 
